Although The Crying of Lot 49 is filled with Pynchon's usual mindnumbing accumulation of details, apparent digressions, and zany characters, it is also the most conventionally organized of Pynchon's novels, since everything is seen from the third person limited viewpoint of Oedipa Maas, unlike the other novels, in which it is often difficult to determine who is telling the story and in which one often must assume that Pynchon himself is addressing the reader directly. Perhaps this traditional form is a result of Pynchon's originally having conceived of this book as a long story, because his short stories are tighter in form and easier to comprehend than his novels.